Making the last push in 2018

November 3rd, 2018, 1:09pm by Sam Wang

For neuroscientists, Election Day is a middling priority when planning conferences. Today starts the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego. It’s an incredible outpouring of science and creative effort from close to 30,000 people – most of whom will be far from home. I hope at least they voted! That is the minimal duty of a citizen in an election, especially one that is so pivotal for the health of our democracy.

If you’re helping with the final push for your preferred side, you can find places to help with our competitive district finder. And wondering what state candidates and ballot questions deserve your attention? Here’s the PEC Guide To Key Elections.

If by chance you are in far southern California and not a neuroscientist, there are some closely contested districts:

the 45th district (Walters-R over Porter-D by 4 +/- 5%; median+/-SD, n=3 polls) and the 48th district (Rohrabacher-R over Rouda-D by 2 +/- 6%, n=3). These are districts where getting out the vote will make a difference.

If you are a neuroscientist, come to the conference and check out some great work we’re doing at Princeton – neural network-based joint classification in flies and mice. High time resolution and easy training – about a hundred examples are enough to train the method, which we call LEAP. Come see what Talmo and Lindsay have to say!